London – August 2002
A gentle voice came down in a different language. Then another. And then another.
A loud child was silenced with a sweet that crackled out of its wrapper.
Strip lighting overhead, black arrows on yellow, corridors with moving floors.
A scared man reached into his pocket for an L-shaped plastic tube, sucked hard and brought colour into his cheeks.
Queuing.
Strip lighting overhead, black arrows on yellow, corridors with moving floors.
A demanding woman – probably a Nigerian with all that around her neck, in her ears, in her nose – had lost the passport, oh! Lost the passport, oh! Yey, has lost dis here the paaaaassport, oh-ho!
Being watched by a white lady with a man’s tie, then watched by a black eye on a stick.
Holding back blinks. Stamp.
Strip lighting overhead, queuing, corridors with moving floors.
The beeping.
The thing to do next: reach the gathering at the tracks that went in a big loop. Stooped older women stood beside concerned men. Bored toddlers harassed teddies’ limbs. Lots of tutting at watches, followed by sighing when suitcases came through the lazy mouth. Belinda pulled her luggage to a trolley. Directed by the movement of crowds, she found an exit. Squeezing the trolley’s handle was settling.
Busy shops and families waited on the other side of a long silver rail. Where was Nana, wearing one of those bright, swirling dresses Belinda so loved, so unlike anything Aunty might wear; dresses that, over Nana and Doctor Otuo’s fortnight in Daban, had shown Belinda parrots, peacocks and toucans?
Tight smiles, wet eyes and wrung hands sprang open. Embraces were long. How would she greet Nana? Perhaps she could kiss her on the cheeks – one on each, neatly timed – like she had seen the women do on Aunty’s The Bold and The Beautiful. It would show how grown-up she planned to be. Belinda’s eyes stung.
‘Over here! Liam, over here! Ohmygodohmygod.’
Belinda checked again, trying not to be distracted by the shouting, by WHSmith, The Body Shop. Moving to the side of the wiggling queue of passengers behind her, she dug out the emergency numbers scribbled in Aunty’s parting gift, a leather notebook. Belinda scanned for somewhere to make that first call. Then her eyes stopped on the sign.
She’d never seen her name written like that. The seven letters were cut from a special kind of paper, bordered with something glittery, like the hems of expensive christening gowns. Pretty and sugary, the sign hid a face. Its holder had a tatty mound of plaits tied with ribbon. Cubes drawn in scratchy purple and black lines covered the girl’s top; colours to match the plaits. How satisfying to wash a pattern like that. Mary would have marvelled at it. Belinda moved closer and saw that the fingernails spilling onto the ‘B’ and ‘A’ were painted purple and black too. There were dark scribbles – letters? – on the wrists.
‘It is … me? You are Amma?’
Her name disappeared. The girl’s skin was as rich as Supermalt, darker even than Doctor Otuo’s. Though the girl’s eyes were puffy, their quickness was obvious. Her breath, Belinda noticed, was stale and bitter like Uncle’s if he returned home late from the city. Amma pointed in the direction for Belinda to move and soon they stood opposite each other like old enemies ready to resolve a grudge. Belinda considered leaning forward. Even though she had never learnt how to do them from Mother, Belinda had started to be better at ‘hugs’. She had recently begun to drop her shoulders during them, and to almost enjoy the sensation of someone else’s warmth coming through into her own chest. Belinda coughed, tilted her body and Amma returned the embrace just as mechanically. Then, in one clean motion, the girl took Belinda’s bag.
‘Here we are then. And – to get this done ASAP: Yes, my hair is messy. I know that. And it might be inconceivable, but I do quite like it like this. So.’ Belinda stared. ‘Let’s head, yes?’
Scrambling behind as Amma marched off, Belinda wanted to praise the girl’s beauty – her good height, cheeks, bottom, all better than Belinda’s. But now the girl frowned, grabbed her stomach and stopped outside Boots. After a pause she started to walk again, trying for a smile, muttering: ‘Sorry. Sorry.’ Belinda wanted to reassure her that there was no need for apology, but then sliding doors parted, they were outside and Amma’s hailing hand swept the air.
In the taxi, Amma didn’t bother to soothe Belinda’s fear that London was one big black road with cars. The motorway gradually thinned out into smaller roads, where there were stores selling rows of plastic bodies – some naked, some clothed – frozen in the middle of dances. People pushed prams and pressed buttons on their cell phones. Some children had hoods on their heads, and some men sat begging for money underneath boxes in the wall where others queued. Why so much queuing if things were supposed to be modern and working here? The cars drove more slowly in this non-motorway part of London and spent too long at traffic lights. Amma slept and sometimes lolled onto Belinda’s shoulder, only to bob up seconds later, refusing to meet Belinda’s eyes, preferring instead to stroke her seatbelt or hunt the dirt beneath her nails.
Belinda concentrated on the meter and its blinking from 33 to 34. Then they zipped across a bridge over slack water, and then to somewhere the signs called Clapham Junction. Clapham, she was pleased with herself for recalling, was where the Otuos had recently bought an extra house which they weren’t intending to live in, which made little sense to her, but had seemed to make Nana very happy. A plain of green opened up to the right. On it, a man with sunglasses pointed to a pink diamond of cloth floating in the sky. Others were lobbing balls around. Others slept on blankets like the matted tramps at Adum. Some ate lazily from baskets. Many of the girls appeared to have come out dressed incompletely, in colourful knickers and bras, so Belinda folded her arms over her chest. Was it the Brockwell Park Nana had told her about?
‘We are almost near, not so?’
‘Yeah.’ Amma stopped, the seatbelt fascinating her again. ‘Yeah, nearly.’
‘That place it looks … it looks very nice. For playing. Relaxing. And you lucky, to have such things. We don’t have such like this in the middle of Kumasi.’
The driver turned a corner and they lurched into each other. Belinda felt Amma stiffen.
A strange white flower bloomed on the ceiling of the front room in which she waited. Beneath her feet, wooden floors – wide strips, scarred with pale patches. To her left, through a folded back partition, was the dining room, a dark, bloody cave with a long table set as though guests were expected soon.
Belinda had had such grand visions of her new home. She was unsurprised that the reality matched none of them. Aunty and Uncle’s house was so much wider; in Daban the houses of all those other bogahs, consultants, accountants, lawyers, returned from overseas had been, too, with rooms coming out from everywhere, rooms that had no purpose, bathrooms for guests, for no one; annexes and servants’ quarters to the back and sides. Didn’t Nana and Doctor Otuo feel boxed in or too small here? Why did the cars pass right in front of the house – where was the perimeter wall? The swimming pool?
Unlike Belinda, whose fingers now pinched each other until she pushed her hands away, Mother had been calm when the biggest change came. On the last day of the Easter vacation, Mother should have returned from the Comm Centre in the middle of Adurubaa with the yellow Western Union receipt to put with the others in the battered tin. She didn’t. Her return to their room that afternoon was ghostly. Belinda was distracted from the Jollof on the stove by the tinkle of keys. Mother waited in the doorway for a moment, very still, very stiff. Mother’s sweep of hair, turning brownish from